


i felt like i wanted to be alone for a long time

by greatunironic



Series: the great blue heron was there [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Found Family, M/M, background and secondary characters, inexplicably this is mainly about farming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29911755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatunironic/pseuds/greatunironic
Summary: “He still thought of them as their sons, a helpless, knee-jerk reaction, but he knew: sometimes, love was not enough.” In the aftermath of Order 66, all Jango has left is the land.
Relationships: Boba Fett & Jango Fett, Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: the great blue heron was there [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199510
Comments: 26
Kudos: 107





	i felt like i wanted to be alone for a long time

**Author's Note:**

> \- there is a sequel to “what we told each other” where order 66 does not happen; this is not that sequel  
> \- title once again from ada limón’s “the great blue heron of dunbar street”, and section titles from her highness beyoncé’s “forward”  
> \- also i should be writing the conclusion of starting from zero but also once again here we are 

The daro root was coming in nicely this year. Winter hadn’t been too harsh, and those first few crucial months after had brought in the perfect amount of rainfall. There’d be a good crop, come solstice, and the yoba and redsprouts would fetch good prices soon after, better than years prior. The forced roots and sprouts in the hothouse had already proven successful at market too. It’d be a good year, and Jango was thankful.

It had been hard at the beginning. He’d not been lost but he’d been — at sea, maybe, was how to describe it. Unmoored. He thought he’d been done with it, feeling as though everything he knew was gone, taken from him, and he had no love for the Republic, for the Jedi _._ He should’ve been glad to see the fall of it, and the rise of what came after.

But it’d been ones he’d known — like Windu, who always asked after Boba when they crossed paths and kept sweets for the younglings within the deep pockets of his robes, and Shaak Ti, who loved the boys like her own and had always put herself between them and danger, and hotheaded, passionate Skywalker — and it had been ones he hadn’t and it had been their elders and it had been the children — _younglings_ , cut down in their home, by those boys who wore Jango’s face — and it had been their culture, their people, their home, for absolutely _nothing_ but a desperate grasp for power, just like it had been on Mandalore all those years ago, and it had been —

It had been —

Jango had picked Aerilon at random after six months in the black. He’d taken three jobs during that time, and Boba had been inconsolable every time he’d gone out, when he’d left the boy behind at some safe house or other. Jango hadn’t liked it much himself, anxiety gripping his heart tighter and tighter the longer it took him to bring his quarry in, and so he’d looked at his ledgers and decided that he’d had enough saved up and squirreled away. He’d opened the star charts and picked the first Mid Rim planet with little Imperial presence he found.

Aerilon wasn’t known for much, a small planet with three even smaller moons. It had a meager population and its orbit was far from many of the main hyperspace lanes. It had good farming though, with dark, rich, fertile soil thanks to a biosphere that transformed iron into chlorophyll, and relatively temperate weather, though it had a few bitter winters in its records. Land was cheap — most people didn’t stay on Aerilon or her moons if they had a choice not to — and Jango had found a small homestead with a spread of land, a large hothouse, and a handful of moisture vaporators at what would be an exceedingly under market rate on any other planet. He’d bought it sight unseen, over the ‘net, and set a course.

Jango had always wondered what the end would look like. He thought for years that it would be at the wrong end of a blaster, a bounty gone south. Even after he’d had Boba, he never thought he’d grow old, not really. Retirement wasn’t common in his line of business, and his only hope was that, when it came, it would be clean and that Boba wouldn’t be there to see it. He’d imagined, much later, another ending, a happier one, but he didn’t get that either. 

He didn’t think he would have ever guessed at this future, one so like his past. But then, he figured, it made a kind of sense: he’d only know two things in his life, truly, and he was done with bounty hunting.

As a boy, he hadn’t loved farming. It had been a chore, begrudgingly awoken before the light had even broken the sky, dragged out into the fields by his parents. He’d tilled loamy earth and planted seeds and had run the combine to harvest, too poor to own harvester droids, his eyes turned skyward whenever possible, daydreaming about being somewhere else, anywhere else. He’d wanted adventure, a life among the stars.

Jango had gotten that, for all its good and bad, and what he had left now was the land.

He’d thrown himself into it when they’d arrived on Aerilon, at the homestead. He’d ordered supplies and equipment while on the ship, had them ready for when they arrived, but that hadn’t prepared him for the state of the place. It had gone to seed, fields overgrown with weeds and other flora, and the house itself covered in an inch of dust. He’d descended like a man possessed, as if cleaning and tilling and planting would allow him to outrun his sorrow and himself. It had, at least, made crashing into bed at the end of the day easier: he was too exhausted to dream; or perhaps just too exhausted to remember them when he woke at daybreak the next morning to begin again.

The nearest town to the homestead was small, but there was the equivalent of a city about half a day's journey on speeder beyond that boasted day workers and an expansive — for Aerilon — market. He had contracted some help there at the beginning to get the land in proper shape before working it on his own. He’d chosen good, hardy crops to start in the fields that first spring and readied the hothouse to have even more that he could grow year round. It had been a good strategy, as that first summer’s crop had fallen victim to some sort of weevil, and all they had to turn their first profit was in the hothouse and in Jango’s dwindling savings.

He hadn’t gotten angry as he stared out on the weevil ridden fields. He’d felt numb for months, half a year. Sometimes, he wondered if he would ever feel again after that burst of pain and fury he’d had that day —

All the while, Boba had followed at his heels, fourteen now but newly acquainted with mortality, loss. He’d learned what little Jango could teach him and then had taken to doing research on the holonet, sitting out at the edge of the fields and watching as Jango seeded the earth, shouting choice facts and suggestions from the readings on his datapad. He was getting very good at baking bread, and had begun to insist that they invest in a bantha or two, maybe a flock of tip-yips.

It wouldn’t be enough for him, Jango knew. Boba was a different person than him, for all their exact DNA, but he had the same hunger in him that Jango had had all those years ago on Concord Dawn. He’d known from the first few months on Aerilon that eventually Boba would need to leave him. It terrified him in a way that it never had before but he made the decision to keep up with a few contacts just in case, and to continue their physical training, no matter how exhausted they were from working the land.

No one came to Aerilon — no one who knew Jango’s face, or the one Boba would grow into. Aerilon had barely even heard of the war. It had made their hiding in plain sight easier. They hadn’t even needed to change their names, though Jango used Jaster’s family name when he was pressed to give his.

But, sometimes, when he was in the city for market day, he’d catch a glimpse of Imperial propaganda at the cantina: the hooded Emperor, his rabid guard dog in black duraplast, and lines and lines of soldiers in white armor, bastardized from Jango’s people. He wondered if they were his boys, and he’d stare at the screen, jaw working, looking. There, on that pauldron — was that orange paint that had been scrapped off? Had that chest plate on that trooper been dented by a clanker? Beneath those helmets, was it Jango’s face, turned blank and hateful by the things the Kaminoans slipped into their brains, the things he’d accepted as the cost of doing business? That he never thought to question until it was too late?

In those first few months, after he had learned what they’d been programmed to do, what they had done, after he had looked and had not found, Jango had laid awake in his bunk, Boba held close to him after the boy had cried himself to sleep again, and he’d thought about the day he agreed to be cloned for the Republic. He’d wanted revenge. He’d wanted to tarnish the Jedi reputation and see them brought low, but this? This _genocide?_ Had there been a chance to stop it? What if he had asked more questions at the beginning? Would he have agreed still? He liked to think he would’ve said no, but he didn’t start questioning things until Obi-Wan had smirked and needled his way into Jango’s bed; and as much as he had changed in those few years, he knew, in the cold, practical recesses of his mind, that it wouldn’t have made a difference.

He had loved Obi-Wan, and he had come to love the clones first because Obi-Wan had loved them, straightforwardly and without complication, and then on their own, for themselves. They had been a family, briefly, wonderfully, and even now as he watched them in their neat little rows, in their white armor, he still thought of them as their sons, a helpless, knee-jerk reaction, but he knew: sometimes, love was not enough.

It couldn’t put food on the table. It couldn’t put fuel in your ship. It couldn’t bring the rains or stop a heatwave. And it certainly couldn’t keep you safe.

Here, on this little homestead on Aerilon, with its dark soil and heavy air, Jango was no one but a farmer with a teenage son. No one asked questions of him beyond how his crops were doing. No one asked where he came from or how long he planned to stay. No one even mentioned the ship he kept just at the edge of his property, weeds growing up round it. The war hadn’t touched Aerilon, nor had the Empire’s long arm reached them beyond propaganda and rhetoric. It was as dangerous as it was peaceful: no one thinking to question, just accepting, and moving along with their lives into this new future.

He grew daro root and redsprouts and yoba. He grew mallow and bantha weed and breadroot. He bartered for two banthas during the second year and bought Boba the flock of tip-yips. The harvester droid broke down and he bought two new ones to replace it. His vaporator repair skills went from serviceable to good to the best in the area, his neighbors coming to him for help when their own broke down. Boba’s breadmaking got better and better and they sold it occasionally at market. Jango taught himself to can and pickle and preserve and expanded the root cellar beneath the homestead the spring of their fourth year on Aerilon.

It wasn’t a life he’d ever thought he’d want but it was a good life and it was his. He had a roof over his head and dirt beneath his nails. Nothing need come to overshadow or sour it except his own dreams of a bygone era, of a crooked smile and warm sheets, of an imaginary little girl or boy with brown skin and bright hair; but very carefully he kept that locked away within the cavity of his chest.

Jango had the harvest to mind, and a flesh and blood son who was looking to the sky more days than he wasn’t now. The female tip-yips were about to brood. He needed to give the harvester droids an oil bath. These were the things he worried about. These were the things he had.

He looked out over his fields, beyond into the horizon, and he did not allow himself to think of it. 

There was a story that he’d been told as a boy, about a warrior who had buried their heart deep within the woods. It was said that the warrior had done it before they ever picked up a blade, because they’d been told that it would keep them invincible on the field of battle. It had, for the warrior had nothing to fear: their heart was safe in the woods where no one could find it. Jango had never understood it. He’d asked: why would you keep something like that where you couldn’t protect it? 

_Listen,_ Jaster had told him, again and again, and eventually, as the story went, the warrior forgot where they had buried their heart, and all the warrior had left was war. But the truth was that of course the warrior knew where their heart was still: they just could not return to it as the same being who had left it.

He hadn’t thought of that story in a very long time but he understood now. He understood the art of removing your heart, and the art of forgetting. He understood that it was the price of survival and, often, the price of survival was steep.

Jango had cut his heart out on Geonosis. He’d left it there. He did not look for it. He did not want it back. He couldn’t.

 _Forward,_ he thought.

There was only forward.

Boba had left the farm at the beginning of the fifth year. Jango had seen the itch hit during the third but hadn’t said anything, waiting for Boba to decide that he was ready. He’d gotten armor ready and presented it to Boba the afternoon Boba sat him down to tell him he wanted to leave, to go bounty hunting like Jango once had. He’d been trained for it, after all, and he’d been making contacts for himself slowly over the holonet.

Jango had pulled the beskar armor out of its chest and asked, “What colors should we paint it?”

He chose green, mainly, for duty — the duty both Jango and Boba still felt for their people and their brothers; some gold, on the pauldrons, but not a lot, as Jango didn’t want Boba to be overcome as he had by that type of hunger; and red around the visor and vambraces, to honor the parent he was leaving behind and the parent who he had lost.

They’d painted it, cured it, and polished the beskar until it shined. Boba had packed a bag and Jango had driven him on their refurbished speeder to the city, where there was a one-way ticket to Dantooine waiting for Boba Meerel. There, he would catch a flight to Takodana and meet up with one of Jango’s old contacts to purchase his own freighter — the one parked at the edge of their fields, weeds growing up against the hull like creeping fingers, was too recognizable by half, though Jango longed to see Boba out in the world with it, knowing he’d be safe behind the shields.

They’d held each other tight in the spaceport, Boba still in his farmer’s garb. He’d change on Dantooine, leave behind Boba Fett and Boba Meerel and become a nameless Mandalorian bounty hunter.

“I’ll be fine,” Boba had said into Jango’s shoulder. He was taller than Jango now. He’d grown up with better food, more vitamins and nutrients. Jango hadn’t let him drink caf that would stunt his growth. If it wasn’t for that face, which Boba had been instructed to keep covered first with a balaclava and then his helmet, Boba could’ve been his own man.

“I know you’ll be fine,” Jango said, gruff, pulling away to knock imaginary dust off the boy’s shoulders. “You’re my son.”

“Buir,” he’d said, rolling his eyes.

Jango had ignored him. “You’ll comm when you get to Dantooine?”

“Yes. And when I get to Takodana, where I’ll give Maz your best, and then I’ll comm when I leave Takodana and give you a star chart read out on —”

“You think you’re awful funny, don’t you?”

Boba had grinned. It was, of course, genetically impossible for him to inherit anything that wasn’t Jango’s but that smile — that was all Obi-Wan. It didn’t hurt so badly to see those little pieces of him in Boba anymore but an ache still lingered, like a break not set quite right. They’d spent so little time together as their makeshift family, yet Boba had picked up so much from him.

“Yeah, well,” said Jango. “Just be safe, and keep your old man in the loop when you can.”

The wry smile had softened. “I will. I’ll miss you, buir, but I’ll be home for the next harvest.”

“You won’t,” he said. Boba had opened his mouth to protest and Jango had waved him off. “You won’t, and it’s fine. Just come home when you can, and comm when you can’t.”

“I will,” Boba had said again.

They’d hugged one last time and Boba had pulled the bottom portion of his balaclava up over his mouth. He’d shouldered the bag with his beskar and things, ducked in to press his forehead against Jango’s, and then he was gone, disappeared into the crush of sentients making their way through the small spaceport.

Jango had headed back to the speeder. He’d debated staying, debated leaning himself up against the speeder and watching as the ships came and went. But, he’d figured, what use was that? The moment Boba disappeared into the crowd, he was gone — the moment Jango had let go of his shoulders and let his boy out into the world, it was all out of Jango’s hands. He’d spent so long craving control, determined to protect his future and set a certain path, he’d been blind to how quickly it could change — how quickly he could be the architect of his own destruction with just a word or a glance or a fleeting smile.

He’d climbed back onto the speeder and sped back to the homestead, where work was waiting to be done.

Boba, of course, was good to his word. He was his father’s son, after all, and parental loss had shaped the boy as much as it had shaped Jango. The difference, however, was that Boba still had one left to call home to, and he did, as often as he could.

Jango grew used to weekly holocalls from his boy. He’d picked up work quickly and was making a name for himself, as any son of Jango’s would, he thought. He preferred lower profile jobs than the ones Jango used to take, and steered clear of the Empire. He worked with the Guild, of course, but kept out of any of the Imperial peace-keeping jobs. He did a lot of cargo jobs as well, having chosen a YT-2400 light freighter as his vessel.

He’d named it The Heart of Kyber, he’d told Jango on one of their calls, his voice faint as he was halfway through a crawl space, poking around at some loose wiring when his call had gone through to Jango. All Jango had been able to see on the call was the boy’s booted feet, which he’d been thankful for; his face had been doing something no doubt unflattering as he’d struggled with his emotions.

“I mean, the registration,” Boba had said and then yelped and cursed. “Damn wires! Anyway, yeah, the Imperial registration just calls it The Heart, of course, but, you know, that’s what her real name is.”

Boba had climbed out of the crawl space eventually and had sat cross-legged on the ground, fiddling with whatever he’d pulled out, as they had discussed Jango’s war of attrition with the tip-yips now that Boba wasn’t minding them and Boba had laughed himself to tears.

Of course, not every call was light-hearted. Once Boba had called, off-schedule, to have Jango talk him through stitching up a slug wound, which took about ten years off Jango’s life, if he was being honest. A few had to be cut short when last minute tips came in and Boba had to jet off after a bounty, and there would be some weeks of complete radio silence.

Jango was prepared for those times. He knew what it was like, out on a hunt, and Boba was conscientious enough that he’d send a text alert if he couldn’t make the weekly call. _All good, just busy_ , they’d often read, or, _stuck on a planet with spotty holo access._

He would try his best to throw himself into the farm when those periods of silence crept up on them with little to no warning. He’d find things to fix around the homestead, plan out another addition to the root cellar, head out to the ship to do some cleaning and make sure nothing had decided to live in the engine compartment while it lay dormant. He researched how to get the tip-yips to leave him the hell alone when he went to get the eggs and bought a restraining bolt for the older of his two harvester droids, who’d taken to wandering off the fields if it got bored. He would rise before daybreak and practice the open-handed katas he’d learned from watching Obi-Wan with his padawan and the younglings, from watching him teach them to Boba too. He would clean his weapons, seed, and harvest.

Life would go on, as it always did, and, eventually, Boba would call, laughing, to tell him about whatever bounty he was on taking a dive and how he’d made it work to his advantage in the end.

In his seventh year in Aerilon, there was an unusually long boute of radio silence from Boba — nearly six months, and the casual text alerts had stopped halfway through the fourth month. Jango was talking himself down from firing up Slave 1 and heading after the boy almost every day. He’d annoyed his contacts half to death as it was, comming incessantly, asking if they’d seen him, heard from him, anything, and all he’d get back from them was rolled eyes, or their species’s equivalent, and an entreaty to “calm down, the kid’s on a job, he’s fine.”

Jango had had enough of his own hunts go absolutely tits-up over the years, had seen first hand what the Empire did to clones after they’d lived out their usefulness, and knew what kind of bounties were out there for former Jedi and their sympathizers. Boba had already mentioned, off-hand and like he thought Jango would miss it, taking a bounty for an alleged Force sensitive off in the Outer Rim, near Hutt Space, and conveniently “losing” the puck.

Boba was Jango’s son, no doubt about it, but he’d spent enough time around the baby Jedi when he was young, not to mention Obi-Wan, to develop a set of ethics that would lead to nothing but trouble in this new Empire. Jango had every right and reason to worry that Boba had gone off and done something absolutely boneheaded, trying to protect some non-existent Jedi in the name of a man he’d only begun to call _papa_ just as it was too late, but he couldn’t exactly tell all his old bounty hunter contacts that.

Of course, just as Jango was about to don his helmet for the first time in years, Boba cropped back up on the radar. He got one head’s up from a contact — your boy landed on Takodana, his ship was banged to hell, and he was running with a crew of two humans, a Lateran, what looked like a Dathomerian refugee, and a droid — before Boba called several hours later, which, unfortunately for Boba, was enough time for Jango to get over his fear that his son was dead in a ditch somewhere and instead get righteously angry. 

Even in the blue of the holocall, Jango could make out his son’s broken nose and impressive black eyes. The kid was trying to grin but kept wincing. He had on his beskar, still, with new burn marks and scuffs and dents.

“I will kill you myself,” Jango said without preamble.

“Aw, buir,” said Boba. “Don’t be like that.”

“I brought you into this world,” he said, “and I’ll take you out of it.”

From behind Boba, someone snorted. Jango ignored it.

“Six months,” he said through gritted teeth. “Six months I didn’t hear from you, and one and a half of them were _complete_ _radio silence._ Do you have any idea what went through my head, Bob’ika? What I thought had happened to you? _Who_ I thought happened to you? You know what they do to sympathizers. You know what they did to your brothers. You know what they did to — to —”

Boba ducked his head. His voice was small as he said, “I’m sorry, buir. I wasn’t thinking about — about what it could have looked like. I’m sorry. I was just — I’d picked up a bounty to help out the Haxion Brood, and it turned out — oh, hells, Cal can explain better. Cal! Get over here.”

Jango waited, arms crossed, as Boba reached behind himself and pulled a young man into the call next to him. He had a couple of old scars on his face, and his own shiner. There was a droid perched on his shoulder and he was wearing the galaxy’s ugliest poncho. The kid grinned, shy, and a fresh scab on his lower lip split open. He waved.

“Hey, I’m Cal,” he said. “Cal Kestis.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” Jango said.

The kid — Cal — widened his eyes, darting a look at Boba. He hissed, “I thought you said —”

“Buir,” said Boba, severe. “Don’t be an ass. Cal’s family.”

Jango stared at them.

“What,” he said flatly.

“I was Master Jaro Tapal’s padawan,” said Cal as quickly as he possibly could.

 _Padawan,_ he thought, blinking.

Boba grinned. “The Haxion Brood has it out for the guy who pilots the ship — a ship that happens to contain this punk Jedi and his mentor and a Nightsister.”

Jango blinked again.

“It’s kind of a long story?” Cal said. “But I was — I’m a survivor. Of the Order. My master — it doesn’t matter. I survived and I ended up meeting the crew of the Mantis when they were trying to find this Jedi holocron with a record of Force sensitive kids, and — well, like I said, it’s a pretty long story, and you probably don’t want to hear it, but during our mission we fell in with some people who’d split off from Saw Gererra’s Partisans, do you know them? We helped them out with some stuff on Kashyyyk before we went on our way, and the after we finished our mission, I know — we knew that there was so much more to be done, for the galaxy, for the good people in it, so we reached out and —”

“And they’ve been running with them ever since, taking side missions to protect and hide force-sensitive kids, but mainly running information and causing trouble for the Empire,” cut in Boba, his eyes wild. “Buir, there’s a whole — it’s a _rebellion_ — out there, who want to take back the galaxy. To free it.”

“Boba,” he said.

“I think about him,” said Boba in a rush. “I think about Papa so much. It’s not fair. What happened to him — what happened to Cal’s master, and all the other Jedi _,_ I know our people never saw eye to eye — but what Palpatine took from us. From all of us. And there’s a chance that we could _take it back._ Don’t you see, buir?”

There was a fire in his boy’s eyes, even through the blue of the call. Jango could feel his lungs expanding and contracting with each breath he took, felt the burn in them, same as Boba’s eyes. HIs mouth tasted like ash.

“You want to join them,” said Jango. He glanced from Boba to Cal and back again. “You’ve already joined them.”

Boba lifted his hands, palms raised. He asked, hoarse, “How could I not, buir? It’s — it was Papa.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

Cal shifted, uncomfortable, on his feet next to Boba. He looked like he was torn between offering comfort and sprinting from the room. It was strange to see a Jedi child show so much emotion, and it just drove home to Jango how lost they had all become. How much, indeed, they had all lost when the Empire rose.

“How could I not?” asked Boba again. “I can’t — we can’t let them fucking _win._ We can’t. I won’t. Don’t you see?”

“I do.” 

Jango felt tired, old. He ran a hand across his face and weighed his options in his head. There weren’t many of them — none, if he was being truly honest with himself. Boba was grown, and his own man, ironic as perhaps that might be, but he was as much Jango’s son as Obi-Wan’s, in the end. Obi-Wan had never seen an injustice that he didn’t want to correct, or a fight that he thought he couldn’t win one way or another. Boba was the best and the worst of them both. All he could hope was that he wouldn’t outlive this particular son.

“Okay,” he said. “I can’t stop you. Just — call, would you?”

A smile split across Boba’s face, undeterred by broken nose or wince. “I always do.”

Jango snorted. “Except when you don’t.”

“Except when I don’t,” he agreed pleasantly and then promptly launched into the story of his broken nose, Cal’s matching shiner, and the Haxion Brood.

The holocalls resumed with prompt regularity. Boba was having fun with his rebel friends, it seemed, excited to talk about this blown Imperial facility or that one. They worked underground, and necessity had Boba still running the occasional bounty, often now with Cal along for the ride, who Boba said was handy with a blaster, or the Dathomirian girl, who Boba said was even better in a fight and had apparently taken to bounty hunting as if she’d been born to it. (Cal frowned, put out, in the back of those calls. Jango would find it hilarious if he wasn’t so horrified at the prospect of history repeating itself.)

All the while, Jango busied himself at the farm. His fields were performing better than expected, and on top of his two harvester droids Jango found himself needing to take on two additional farmhands. The humanoids native to Aerilon were moon pale, dark-eyed, and often grew no taller than a meter and a half but they were hardy and stockily built despite it. Gnaeus was just twenty standard and a hard worker, if a bit of a daydreamer; August was a harvest or so older, as the people of Aerilon reckoned time, and just as hard working and had a head for numbers. He was the one to convince Jango to take some of their leftover redsprouts and try milling it for flour. They were good kids, smart and kind. They slept in Boba’s old room, tip to tail on Boba’s old pallet; Gnaeus complained that August kicked in his sleep. They argued like brothers every morning over the caf but got to business quick when Jango showed up. They’d never known hardship beyond the fields. 

Winter came and winter went, as winter did. They sold preserves and dried yoba at market, with the crop from the hothouse. None of them were good at bread baking, and the neighbors often jokingly complained about the lack. Jango sketched out plans for an addition on the homestead, two small rooms to house the boys and another expansion to the root cellar once the spring thaw came, for the new mill. The boys helped him begin construction; August was terrible with a hammer, and both Jango and Gnaeus teased him mercilessly.

It was August who picked up the holocall that would change everything, just a year after Boba joined up the rebels. Jango had been coming back from doing some vaporator maintenance for one of the neighboring homesteads. Gnaeus and August were loading the speeder for the market day in the morning — Jango had started letting them run the booth for him six months after they started; he’d never enjoyed the bartering process and Gnaeus, with his round face and soft eyes, was deceptively good at it — and August was coming out of the house just as Jango was parking his bike.

“Boss,” he said, nodding once as he bent to grab a sack of redsprout flour to toss to Gnaeus. “Your boy’s on the holo. He called maybe ten ago? I told him you’d be back soon, so he said he’d hang around.”

“Thanks, August,” he said. He slapped each boy on the shoulder and headed in.

The holo was lit up on the scrubbed wood table in the center of the kitchen. Wherever Boba was, he was leaning onto his hand and frowning absently into the distance, lost in thought. When Jango got in range, he perked up, blinking.

“Buir!” he said. “Auggie was just telling me you’ve got a mill running these days.”

Jango nodded. “It was his idea. We always have leftover redsprouts, suggested we try our hand at flour. He’s taking our first sack to market tomorrow, see what we can get.”

“Glad to see they’re working out,” Boba said.

“Mm.” He sat down at the table, leaned back into his chair. “How’s hunting?”

“Good, good,” his boy said, a bit distractedly. He glanced to his right, where he’d been looking earlier and made a face. “Merrin says to tell you I fell in a hole on the last one, but it was not a hole, Merrin, it was a very small ditch and I meant to do that.”

One tattooed hand popped into the image and poked Boba in the check. Merrin’s voice came in as clear as her hand as she said, “It was a sizeable hole. You twisted your ankle.”

From somewhere out of frame, Cal laughed.

Boba batted Merrin’s hand away and glared. “Whatever. I’m fine, buir, and I did mean to be there, okay, it was the best vantage point. The ankle thing was incidental!”

Jango watched, smirking, as the holocall devolved into Boba arguing with an unseen Merrin and Cal about the nature of holes and ditches, and vantage points. It was good for Boba to have friends like this, he thought, even if the circumstances that brought them together were less than ideal. He hadn’t had anyone growing up, not until Obi-Wan insisted that Boba should interact with the other clone cadets and then padawans whenever they ended up near the Temple. They’d kept strictly to themselves on Aerilon, too; August and Gnaeus were the first people besides Boba and Jango to step foot in the homestead since the last owners.

He wondered, suddenly, what it was like for Cal of all beings to look at Boba everyday and pushed the thought ruthlessly away.

When Boba finally shooed Merrin and Cal away, he turned back to Jango and launched into what Jango suspected was a highly redacted version of the hunt, at least given the argument that had preceded. Boba seemed a bit distracted still, unusually thoughtful for his boy — Boba was smart but not often given to introspection. Like Jango, he tended to accept things as a mission necessary and move along quickly; there were things you could not change, so why bother?

Jango did his best to ignore the disquiet he felt and in turn told him about the milling process and how even good-natured Gnaeus wouldn’t go anywhere near Boba’s damn birds. They discussed a new Guild guideline Boba didn’t much care for and the gossip Jango picked about around town as he fixed vaporators — Jango had been invited to a handfasting, his third since they came to Aerilon. Now that Boba was gone, the neighbors had apparently decided Jango needed socializing and would not take no for an answer, even with the boys now under his roof. They talked about Boba’s experiments with breadmaking aboard his ship, or aboard the Mantis, depending on what they were doing and what the mission called for.

They were in the process of arranging a drop — Boba wanted to use some of the redsprout flour in a loaf, see what it was like — when there was a sudden, strange gleam in his eye. Jango didn’t particularly like the look of it. It reminded him of the clones, in better times, in between campaigns, bored and up to no good.

“Hey, you know what?” he said. “Buir, you should actually come visit us!”

From a distance, Jango heard a startled, “What?” and echoed it. “What?”

“Yeah!” he said. “Yeah, actually, we were just about to head to one of the new rebel bases and check it out, take a peek at the security, refuel, get some new marching orders. I think, maybe, you’d like it. You should meet us there!”

“Boba,” said Jango. He’d had enough of war, and of the Empire. He hated it but what good could they do? It was a young man’s game, rebellion, and Jango had been tired and empty for so long. Boys and girls like Boba and Cal and Merrin would change the face of the galaxy if they were able, not old soldiers like Jango.

Regimes came and went. It was the nature of things. He was _tired._

“C’mon,” cajoled Boba. “I remember how much fun you and Papa used to have —”

“Boba,” he said again, sharp.

“I just think,” he was saying, reasonable and even, like he hadn’t even tried it, “that you should at least come meet the generals and commanders and captains who are running it. They could use your advice, I think.”

“You know I was never part of that,” he said.

“I know,” said Boba. “I still think they could use your advice. And there’s a couple of people I think you might now, floating around. Some familiar faces.”

“Wait,” said Cal, sounding closer now than he had. “Does he not —”

Boba’s left arm jerked suddenly and Cal grunted.

“Does he not what?” asked Jango.

“Cal’s nervous to meet you in person, is all,” he said. “He’s worried you’re not going to like him anymore once you find out we’re dating.”

“Boba!” said Cal, strangled.

Jango fought the urge to close his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. He stared at Boba instead, who stared back. Jango said, “Every grey hair on my head is directly related to you.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “So, you want to come meet my Jedi boyfriend and criticize some people?”

Now, Jango did pinch the bridge of his nose. “Fine.”

“Great!” said Boba. “Great! We’ll be there at the start of the next ten-day, I’ll have Cal send you the coordinates and we’ll be good to go. Okay, I’ve gotta go now, because Cal’s glaring at me, but I love you, buir, and I can’t wait to see you!”

The comm cut out unceremoniously and Jango leaned back in his chair, the wood scraping against the duracrete. He sighed. It would be good to see his boy in person — they hadn’t seen one another at all since Boba had left the planet, and he missed him fiercely, achingly — but subterfuge was not Boba’s specialty, nor, clearly, Cal’s. Something was being hidden from him, but what was it? And why?

He sighed again. A ten-day between now and then. He supposed he would just have to trust the two of them that it wasn’t anything bigger than trying to rope Jango into becoming a part of their little rebellion.

Still, he gave himself five minutes to sit quietly at the table, lost in thought, before heading out to join August and Gnaeus and finish loading the speeder for market day. There would be plenty to do on the farm before he left, and there was no use getting caught up in what ifs.

 _Forward,_ he thought.


End file.
